


even this will be for you

by undead_exotannie



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop, Peninsula (2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Despair, Gen, Zombie Apocalypse, other members present in flashbacks, set in the universe of peninsula, three shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undead_exotannie/pseuds/undead_exotannie
Summary: Four years after the outbreak, only three members of EXO are still alive. Yixing remembers. Chanyeol regrets. Jongdae holds on.
Kudos: 7





	even this will be for you

> _We exchange our fates_
> 
> _Running toward each other_
> 
> _As much as there was no choice but for us to go awry_
> 
> _I know we have loved that much more_
> 
> _\- EXO, Baby Don't Cry_

Yixing still jumped, sometimes. Four years and the echoing howls of the dead still sent a chill straight through his ribcage. That was what happened, though, he supposed, when you spent half your time in another world. The apocalypse wasn't always second nature.

"You okay?"

It had been one of those hollow cries that finally snapped Yixing back to reality, but this time it was Jongdae's voice that made him jump, dropping the tea packets he hadn't been paying attention to for quite some time.

"If you're tired, you can sleep." The words were a hushed rumble in the darkness, Jongdae's eyes illuminated by the single flickering candle on the floor between them. "I'll finish up."

Yixing's gaze fell on the crate in his friend's lap, the rest of the dried goods already sorted and packed away.

"Sorry," he whispered sheepishly, his own voice muted in spite of the empty apartments above and below them. It would've been less embarrassing if he hadn't been the one to offer help in the first place, trying to make himself useful on a night when he couldn't seem to focus on anything remotely productive. "I guess I got distracted."

The corners of Jongdae's mouth twisted into a half-smile. The kind that reminded Yixing of the real ones he used to get. 

"Are you sure you don't want me to do anything else?"

Jongdae breathed what might have been a laugh. "It's okay, there's not much left." He swept Yixing's packets up with one hand and tucked them into the crate, getting his legs underneath him to hoist it up above the gas stove. "Besides, the sun'll be up in an hour or so."

That was when Yixing noticed the dishes still laid out on the floor, a bowl of rice with canned spinach and bean sprouts, untouched.

He glanced at the door—or at least, where he knew the door was, beyond the shroud of darkness where the candlelight didn't reach. Chanyeol had yet to trudge in, dragging his nightly haul behind him and tracking the street rot onto Jongdae's freshly swept floors. But Chanyeol was always late. He didn't seem to mind his rice cold.

Yixing shifted on numb legs, hauled himself to his feet and stretched, fingers brushing the rough edge of the socket where the ceiling fan used to hang. "I'll just be outside, then," he slurred with the effort, dropping his hands back to his sides and ducking under the string of drying herbs from Jongdae's window garden.

Jongdae waved his acknowledgement, and Yixing heard a splash of water in the basin as he turned and headed for the balcony.

He didn't need the help of candles to navigate around the tower of water jugs in the middle of the living room, or reach for the quilt on the wall, fingers finding purchase on the soft cotton and pulling it aside just far enough to let a sliver of moonlight through the plexiglass door on the other side. 

He pressed an eye to the crack, scanning the dim grey balcony, and then slipped past the quilt and opened the door, replacing both behind him with the grace of a cat before stepping out into the vast emptiness that was a clear summer's night in Seoul.

The city stood silhouetted, black against black, only the patches without stars showing where the buildings stopped. It felt bigger without lights. A towering monument to the dead that roamed its streets.

Out here, Yixing felt like he was the only living person left on earth, standing on the precipice of a forgotten world.

He lowered himself onto the concrete slab and threaded his legs through the iron railing, breathing in the sweet stench of rot as a stale breeze blew past him. Somewhere in the distance another moan echoed through the hollow skyscrapers, like a forlorn ghost searching for a home it would never find again.

He could just barely make out the glint of windows in the next building, but as usual, it was what Yixing _couldn't_ see that drew his gaze.

Beyond the city, the ocean lapped at moonlit shores. He imagined he could see it, a shining thread on the horizon, the port laying just as dead and abandoned as the last time he'd seen it, the day they'd learned it was all hopeless.

It was the same vision that had been plaguing him all night. Four years. _Exactly_ four years. That's how long it had been. Yixing never could keep track of the days back when it mattered, but now he couldn't seem to escape them.

The rot had still been fresh then.

Chanyeol's cherry-pink phone case peeked from his back pocket as he climbed the bridge ahead of Yixing, the only phone they'd managed to hold on to, now completely useless. It had only taken two days for the cell towers to go dark, and the power followed shortly after. They had no way to charge it, no one to call even if they managed. But still it hadn't occurred to them to throw it away, holding on to some imaginary value, as if it would ever matter again.

The last thing they'd seen before the screen went dead was the evacuation order. _Passenger ships boarding at Incheon Port._

"There's no way," Jongin had breathed, the tremor in his voice bouncing off the department store bathroom walls. "We'll never get there."

"We have to try," Yixing's own voice had echoed back, surprising himself, suddenly refusing to let that spark of hope die with Chanyeol's phone screen. "If they're getting people out- we could-" He stumbled over his words, the Korean language still tying his tongue, but they were all looking at him now. Six grimy, tear-streaked faces where there should have been eight. "We have to try," he repeated, that phrase in itself filling his aching chest with resolve.

Incheon Port was just four blocks from where the pile-ups had finally forced them to abandon the van, but four blocks sounded like a death sentence now.

In fact, he still wasn't sure how they'd made it, aside from sheer luck, across the raw carnage of the initial outbreak. If any of them had been as bold as they'd gotten later, they almost certainly wouldn't have survived. But five nights, creeping from cover to cover, storefront to abandoned storefront, afraid to step outside for more than a few minutes at a time, somehow it had saved them. 

That spark of hope, the small glimmer that filled Yixing seemed to spread to the others, one by one, like the flames that lit the night sky as towers hollowed and ash rained to coat the sidewalks. It was a visceral kind of determination that drove them onto the bridge that day as sunrise threatened the sky and they left the last city block behind.

Yixing realized only when he bumped into Chanyeol that they'd stopped.

"What is it?" he'd asked, still whispering, still cautious.

Chanyeol didn't reply. Minseok swore under his breath, and then Yixing saw the barricades. It looked like a police checkpoint, but there was nobody else on the bridge, the line of metal barricades smeared with dark handprints and knocked in by a car with shattered windows.

"You've got to be kidding me," breathed Kyungsoo.

"Maybe… the next one…?" Baekhyun's voice still held the barest hint of hope, like a candle flickering dangerously close to the wick.

"Are they guarding closer to the port?" asked Jongdae, glancing over his shoulder and fingering the knife he'd picked up from the street at the beginning of their journey.

"No," said Chanyeol. The lanky boy still hadn't moved, eyes focused on something past the bridge. His voice was raspy and quiet. Too quiet. "I don't think they are."

Yixing turned to follow his gaze, and then his heart sank to his boots.

Incheon Port was deserted.

Smoke rose from the bay just across the access road, the pale light of dawn glinting off the side of an overturned freighter. They were close enough to see debris floating, black in the water. And then Yixing realized they were bodies.

"Oh, God." Minseok almost doubled over, clutching at the guard rail to keep his balance. 

It took a few moments for Yixing to process, but the look on Jongdae's face confirmed his fears.

"We're too late," Jongin murmured, as if begging somebody to tell him he was wrong. "Nobody's coming."

Baekhyun sank to the concrete.

"Nobody would be stupid enough to pull in there now," said Jongdae, and then he laughed, a short, harsh laugh that Yixing had never heard from him before.

There was no security in sight. Only abandoned cars and an ocean of corpses lapping at the shore. And seven filthy, bedraggled boys whose dark circles and tangled, ash-covered hair almost made them unrecognizable as the people they'd been a week ago.

Yixing shook his head. "No… there has to be something else… some other way..." This couldn't be where it ended. They'd come so far, it couldn't all be for nothing, it couldn't be. "Maybe-"

"No," snapped Jongin, "Stop it. You're the one who brought us out here. There's no other way, we never should have come, I knew it wouldn't work! We should have just died with Junmyeon hyung and Se-"

"Shut up!" Chanyeol's voice came down like a thunderclap, and then suddenly it was very quiet.

They looked at each other, realizing in unison the mistake they'd just made, and the fire in Jongin's eyes vanished instantly as the fear returned. He opened his mouth, maybe to apologize, but Yixing never found out because the screech from the other side of the bridge made them all turn before he could get a word out.

The front door of one of the cars banged open and body of a girl thrashed head-first onto the pavement, collapsing into a mass of twisting limbs and gagging noises as she jerked unnaturally onto unsteady legs, one obviously broken, bone jutting through the blood coating her shin.

Yixing reeled back before he could stop himself, the motion snapped the girl's remaining eye straight onto him.

Baekhyun gasped, and Yixing couldn't tell if it was surprise, or the fact that none of them had yet seen someone with half a face, but the thought only flashed across his mind for a split second before his fight or flight kicked in and he dove for the nearest minivan.

"Down!" hissed Jongdae, dragging Jongin with him as they all shot for cover.

Across from Yixing, Kyungsoo ducked behind an overturned bus and raked the ground for a weapon, latching onto half of a cement block just as the girl came shrieking toward them at a speed no one with a broken leg should ever reach.

She slammed into Yixing's minivan first.

He scrambled back against the guard rail, heart pounding just as something struck her from behind and she crashed face-first with a spray of blood from the back of her skull.

The cement block landed inches from Yixing's fingers, and he and Kyungsoo both stared, waiting.

Then with a roar she spun on all fours and lurched at her attacker.

Yixing grabbed the cement block and hurled it as hard as he could, this time snapping her arm with a sickening crack, and giving Kyungsoo just enough time to kick her off before she spun again and threw herself at Jongdae.

He crashed backward before he even had a chance to swing his knife, landing hard on the pavement, the momentum throwing the shrieking girl over his head. 

And then Jongin screamed.

The girl was on top of him in a second, scrabbling at his legs before Jongdae could pull himself back up, landing a few seconds late from behind and sinking the knife into her exposed throat.

Blow after blow, hacking through the rabid creature's spinal cord, over and over until he was more blood than human. Until finally she stopped moving, gurgling red bubbles as Jongdae kicked her away.

Jongin's breaths came ragged, shaking and sobbing as he pulled back his pant leg to reveal the deep, purple ring of a bite.

Yixing just stared.

As if he didn't know what it meant.

As if it couldn't possibly be real.

For one long, terrible moment, no one moved.

Yixing's stomach turned to lead.

"It's okay," said Jongdae, "It's okay, it's okay, hey, look at me, it's okay."

But Jongin just shook his head, clinging like a trembling vice to Jongdae as the elder held him, eyes flicking desperately up and down his body as if there were some hidden answer there.

Amid Jongin's gasping sobs, another sound reached the bridge.

Yixing's gaze snapped back at the stretch between them and the port, where the sun had crested and the harsh light illuminated scattered, charging figures, eyes and mouths agape.

"We have to get out of here," choked Minseok, but he sounded just as lost as Yixing felt.

Where were they supposed to go?

"Shh, it's okay" Jongdae cooed, brushing Jongin's sweaty hair back, ignoring the world around him as Jongin's skin paled and dark veins crept up his throat, choking on sobs, gasping for air.

Chanyeol glanced around wildly, emerging from his own hiding spot, eyes and nose red, and finally broke away to dart from car to car, Yixing unable to fathom yet what he might be looking for.

The ragged figures were getting closer. Some had almost reached the bridge. 

Jongin's eyes faded even as he whimpered, straining wide and white.

Yixing wanted to tell himself it wasn't real. None of this was happening. But the first roar from the bottom of the bridge sent his heart pounding, and Chanyeol yelled "Come on! Over here! Hurry!"

And then it all came back, that visceral instinct, that voice inside screaming _stay alive, stay alive, stay alive._

Yixing grabbed Jongdae's shoulders.

"No-"

"Jongdae-yah-"

"We can't-"

"It's too late!" Yixing heard himself shout, "We have to move! Come on!" He yanked one of Jongdae's arms free, and there was no strength in the boy's protests.

"No, wait, please-"

Jongin slipped from Jongdae's lap and rolled onto the pavement, coughing.

Yixing hated himself for it. He hated himself for all of it. But he pulled Jongdae bodily free of their little brother and dragged him away as the growling shapes rushed up toward them, hot tears streaming down his face.

He wasn't even sure where they were going until he caught sight of Chanyeol waving them on, holding a car door open. 

He didn't have time to question it.

He shoved Jongdae into the back seat and climbed in behind him, just as Baekhyun bolted into the front seat, Minseok right behind him. Kyungsoo climbed in behind Yixing and slammed the door.

A howl went up outside, but the front door stayed open.

"Where's Chanyeol?" gasped Baekhyun. 

Yixing craned to look out the window, Chanyeol's form suddenly missing. Then his familiar broad silhouette came running from across the road, and Yixing thought he saw a bloodstained cement block drop from his hand before he launched into the front seat and shut the door just as the first snarling shape crashed into it.

Bodies slammed into the side of the car, tinted windows against fingers and teeth.

It was a harrowing thirty minutes that Yixing never forgot, thinking the glass would give in at any second, praying they didn't get through the windshield.

But eventually the pounding slowed down, their attackers losing interest or simply forgetting about them, wandering off one by one.

And then came the silence, broken only by Jongdae's muffled sobs into Yixing's shirt, a sound he wished he'd never heard, but one he would hear many times afterward.

All of them cried, that day, waiting out the light as the shambling remnants of humanity bumped blindly into their hiding place.

_"You're the one who brought us out here."_

Jongin's last words echoed in his head.

_"We never should have come."_

That was when it should have sunk in, that hope had no place in their new world. 

That was when he should have known it was pointless to try.

But somehow, against everything, in spite of it all, that wretched hope still clung to him. That faint voice inside still said _we have to try._

_Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive._

So he had.

For the second time that night, the calls of the dead broke him out of his reverie.

The balcony had grown cold under his fingers. The chill just before dawn.

He took a deep breath, drawing his legs up through the iron rails and hugging them to his chest as the black city came back into focus, just a little sharper against the grey sky.

Four years…

It was a long time. Too long, some might say, to have survived here. But they'd done it. At least, some of them had.

They'd lasted through the long nights before they found a permanent shelter, through the first winter when there was nothing to burn and the water froze solid, through hot summers when the stench of flesh baking on pavement was enough to suffocate you. 

They'd outlived the city.

Yixing knew it better like this than he had when it was alive. The stillness and blackness where there should have been lights. Sometimes he couldn't even remember what it looked like before, too busy to take it in. Now, of course, he had all the time in the world.

Behind him, he heard the familiar creak of the balcony door.

"You're still up?"

Yixing glanced over his shoulder and offered a small smile in reply. He could have asked Jongdae the same thing, but didn't, instead returning his gaze to the city. From the way Jongdae had decided to reorganize the entire pantry, it seemed like he remembered what day it was, too.

The door latch clicked softly and a moment later his friend's warmth had settled at his side.

Yixing didn't have to ask if Chanyeol was back yet. Sometimes he thought Jongdae was physically incapable of laying his head on the pillow until Chanyeol came through the door. 

He supposed they all had something they were holding onto.

For Yixing, it was the stars.

It didn't even seem strange anymore, that you could see the stars in Seoul. He remembered the first time Baekhyun had pointed up, eyes wide, the first night they'd spent on the roof of their old hideout, after the fires finally died and the nights were truly dark. They'd all stared at the sky as if they'd never seen one before.

That was the first time they really looked up, the first time anyone had thought of anything but their bleak future in weeks. That was when Yixing's foolish hope sputtered back to life inside his chest, quietly, like a promise from the sky. The stars were still there, and so were they. And Yixing held onto that promise, never thinking that the stars might lie.

Now they carved shadows down the scar that marred Jongdae's lips and chin, reflecting in his tired eyes as the world lightened to a dull grey and heralded a morning that no longer held any promise but danger.

They sat without speaking until the faintest pink tinged the horizon, and the front door finally banged open inside the apartment.

Yixing glanced back, the thump of heavy footsteps eventually finding their way to the balcony door, where Chanyeol's face appeared for a second behind the glass before it swung open.

Jongdae took one look at his blackened boots and wrinkled his nose. "Can't you at least leave those in the stairs?"

Chanyeol snorted. "Welcome back yourself."

Jongdae shot him a longsuffering look, as if they all weren't perfectly aware of how relieved he was. "What took so long?"

Chanyeol settled on Yixing's other side, patting his back in greeting. "Horde got in the way. Had to cut through the shopping center, I'll go back for the bag tomorrow." He leaned back and squinted up at the pastel sky, wavy hair falling in tangled knots down to his throat. Yixing thought he heard him sigh.

It had been a long time since any of them had stayed up long enough to see the sunrise. It almost seemed foreign now, bathing the desolate world in a harsh golden light that didn't belong to it anymore.

The skeletal remains of old scaffolding clung to the sides of skyscrapers, once-gleaming windows coated in years of fine dust and grime, broken glass glinting like teeth in front of black holes to empty apartments that seemed to have swallowed their occupants whole.

Yixing watched as Chanyeol absentmindedly rubbed dried blood from his jaw.

"How many this time?"

Chanyeol and Jongdae both glanced at him, Jongdae's hair slipping from behind his ear and falling to frame his face.

"Sixty three," said Chanyeol, with a flicker of grim self-satisfaction in his eyes. His lips twitched. "New record."

He never brought it up, but they all knew Park Chanyeol didn't just hunt for supplies. Jongdae always said he was going to go out in a blaze one day, and Yixing believed it.

"Idiot," mumbled Jongdae, but this time there was a hint of pride in his tone.

It seemed the significance of the day was not lost on any of them.

Yixing almost felt like they should do something, some kind of ritual or memorial, but there was nothing to bow to, nothing to memorialize. Just the empty spaces of six boys who'd vanished like smoke in the night, and the memories of the three they'd left behind.

In some ways, they were the memorial. Determined to last, if only to make it mean something. Because it needed to mean something.

All those deaths, that pain, those tears, those regrets. Who else would remember them? Who else would remember the way it felt to score their first supply haul, or the first time they all laughed at Baekhyun's jokes again? Who else would remember Jongdae's smiles—the real, wide ones—or his sharp teasing cackle that rang out like music over the others? Who else would remember Junmyeon and Sehun's bickering? Who else would remember long nights in the practice room, or the times they secretly ordered chicken when their managers weren't around? Who else would remember the world before?

"What do you think it's like?" asked Chanyeol, his voice low and a little distant. "Being dead?"

"Why," asked Jongdae, "You thinking of trying it out?"

Chanyeol swung his leg over Yixing's and kicked Jongdae's dangling ankles.

"Ow!"

"I'm being serious."

Jongdae tucked his legs up protectively and hugged them to his chest before looking back out at the city. "I don't know. Probably more relaxing than this."

"My parents always said nothing happens after you die," said Yixing. "It's just… over."

Chanyeol pouted slightly in thought.

"What about you?" asked Jongdae.

"I guess… I used to imagine it was like being alive. Just somewhere else."

"Used to?"

Chanyeol shrugged. "Before."

Yixing nodded. Before it was real. Back when death was just an abstract concept.

"Now they just feel… gone."

Jongdae glanced over at Chanyeol, eyes thoughtful for a moment before he sighed. "Well, when I die I'll be sure to come back and haunt you."

"Can you just let me think for three seconds? You're annoying enough alive!" 

Jongdae smirked. "Sorry."

Yixing didn't miss the small crack in Chanyeol's annoyance, either.

"And you better stay that way, both of you."

Yixing met Chanyeol's eyes for a second and grinned. "Love you too, bro. Ow, would you stop kicking people?"

"It's how he communicates," said Jongdae, ducking away from a punch to the shoulder. "Okay, okay, I think it's time for bed now."

Yixing pulled his legs up and turned to follow Jongdae to his feet, but then he paused, cocking his head.

Jongdae froze too, and Chanyeol turned around just as Yixing looked up and saw the shape two stories up, hanging half out an open window, gurgling and twitching.

"Oh yeah," said Chanyeol, "That's why we don't do this more often."

Jongdae grabbed a chunk from a broken flower pot and threw it before either of the others could react, striking the shape and making it lurch far enough to dislodge from the window.

It should have fallen past them, but instead its last motion sent it crashing down onto the balcony railing with a shriek and a flurry of limbs and teeth.

Chanyeol jumped to his feet, but Yixing was faster, knocking the snapping face away with one arm and sending it over the edge with a sharp kick.

It hurtled, screeching, to the street below, where its cries were cut short by the crack of skull on concrete.

Adrenaline pounded belatedly through Yixing's veins, bringing life back to his stiff limbs as the three of them gazed over the railing.

A rustling, whispering sea of bodies ambled out of the shadows to investigate the noise, some charging straight into the building, others falling onto the first body. Soon it was so thick they couldn't see their attacker anymore.

"So much for going out tomorrow," said Jongdae. "You okay?"

"All good," breathed Yixing.

Jongdae clapped him on the back and glanced down at the street one more time before looking away and heading toward the door. "Well, I'm going to bed."

Yixing almost followed, but Chanyeol hadn't moved, still staring down at the growling, undulating mass of human flesh.

"You coming?"

He touched the boy's sleeve and Chanyeol jumped, eyes snapping onto him as if he'd forgotten he was there.

"What? Uh, yeah."

But Yixing knew that look. He'd been watching a different horde, from a different summer, under a different sunrise.

Yixing squeezed the boy's arm and offered a small, understanding smile.

Chanyeol looked at him for several moments with an expression he couldn't read, then glanced at the door where Jongdae had already disappeared, then dropped his gaze to his boots.

"I killed him."

Yixing blinked.

"Jongin, on the bridge."

"I know."

"You… do?"

"I mean, I, uh, figured. You went back."

Chanyeol nodded. "I just… I thought, whatever happens. You know, after you die. I thought anything would be better than… that." 

Yixing swallowed, glancing down at the swarm, and then back at Chanyeol. "I think… I think he knows. Wherever he is."

Chanyeol looked at him, bit the inside of his lip, and then heaved a deep breath and nodded.

Yixing wrapped an arm around his back and leaned his head on his shoulder, the leather of Chanyeol's jacket already warm in the sun. 

They stood there for several more minutes before Yixing straightened up. "Come on, let's get some sleep, hm?"

Gently, he pulled Chanyeol from the railing and led him to the door, breathing in the scent of bloodstained leather as he pulled the quilt aside to let them through.

Because in the end, who else would remember the way Chanyeol's wild hair glinted in the sunlight, or the way their shadow streamed down into the street? Who else would remember Jongdae's muffled complaints before the quilt dropped shut, or the silent determination in Yixing's chest as he gathered every detail and held on?

"Hyung?"

"Hm?"

"Thanks."


End file.
